M WAQAR.....
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary.Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
--Albert Einstein !!!
NEWS,ARTICLES,EDITORIALS,MUSIC... Ze chi pe mayeen yum da agha pukhtunistan de.....(Liberal,Progressive,Secular World.)''Secularism is not against religion; it is the message of humanity.''
تل ده وی پثتونستآن

On Tuesday, China demonstrated its goodwill in the face of U.S. hostility by returning the underwater drone that was located in the South China Sea. In a recent People’s Daily commentary, the USNS Bowditch was accused of keeping watch over China. The news has been largely one-sided, with Western media frequently replacing “discovery of unknown device” with “seizure of U.S. underwater drone.” But given China’s past experience with the Bowditch, the role of oceanographic data in warfare operations, and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s aggressive actions and comments, China has every reason to be deeply suspicious of U.S. naval surveillance in the South China Sea.

The Bowditch has long been associated with spying operations against China. A recent article on the China Military website called the ship a threat to China’s national security. According to a 2011 Congressional Research Service reported on the subject of China’s military and security developments, the Bowditch has been involved in at least two major incidents. In March 2001, the U.S. accused a Chinese frigate of carrying out “aggressive and provocative actions” against the Bowditch within China’s exclusive economic zone. In September 2002, a similar event unfolded a second time. Given China’s past experience with the Bowditch, it is normal for China to be suspicious of its activities in waters facing China.

Oceanographic data is useful for scientific research, but this data can also be used to support submarine and undersea warfare operations in areas of tactical importance, such as the South China Sea. In addition, the Bowditch is not the first noncombat “research” ship to sail the waters of Northeast Asia. The USS Pueblo, a “research” ship captured by North Korea during Cold War, was used to intercept communications from North Korea. There is no way for China to be absolutely certain that the Bowditch is not engaged in hostile spying operations against China or that data being collected is not for the purpose of warfare operations against China.

Then there is the wildcard that is currently upsetting China-U.S. relations. Shortly after the Chinese navy collected the underwater device to make sure that it did not pose a security risk, Trump lashed out at China for “stealing” the underwater drone in an “unpresidented (unprecedented) act.” However, the situation was being handled military-to-military in a professional manner, and his comments only added fuel to the fire. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying on Monday called Trump’s word choice “totally inaccurate.”

China has long opposed U.S. close-in reconnaissance operations in the South China Sea. Despite the spiral of tensions, China demonstrated its goodwill and returned the underwater drone “after friendly negotiation.” China should be given credit for handling the situation in a professional and peaceful manner.

As world leaders and ordinary people expressed their horror following the assassination of Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov, New York Daily News (NYDN) writer Gersh Kuntzmann openly celebrated the public execution, calling it an example of 'justice [being] served.'

“As Vladimir Putin’s man in Turkey, Karlov was the public face of that murderous dictator’s war crimes around the globe and of oppression at home,” Kuntzmann wrote. “I, for one, am shedding no tears for Andrei Karlov.” Kuntzmann also repeatedly compared the assassination of Karlov to the killing of Ernst vom Rath, a Nazi German embassy official shot dead in 1938 by Jewish teenager Herschel Grynszpan, while also likening Vladimir Putin, the leader of the government that Karlov served, to the infamous dictator Adolf Hitler. “Like Karlov, Rath was the public face of atrocity — in this case, Adolf Hitler's genocide, anti-Semitism and coming global aggression… [history] has vindicated Grynszpan — and, indeed, vindicated others who have fought against aggression and fought for freedom.” While giving a welcome speech at the Ankara Center for Contemporary Art on Monday December 19, Karlov was shot nine times in the back by Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş, a Turkish police officer. The 62-year-old father of one was unarmed and unguarded, and died soon after. Altıntaş’s motivations are not yet clear, but after the murder he yelled “Don't forget Aleppo, don't forget Syria!" The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which nearly every country has signed and ratified, places the safety of diplomats as sacrosanct. Even in wartime, a diplomat’s task of providing reliable means of communication between nations is thought to be apolitical and crucial. Kuntzmann, however, disagrees. “Karlov's job in Turkey was to ease tensions over Russia's atrocities in Syria and its incursions inside Turkey itself — meaning his job was to enable and normalize Vladimir Putin. Given that role, he wasn’t a diplomat, but a soldier, and his death is the same whether it came on a battlefield outside Aleppo or in an art gallery in Ankara.”

Kuntzmann’s comments have been met primarily with outrage on NYDN’s Facebook page. “Shouldn't we be sad based on the fact he was a human being who was killed on camera? For the whole world & his family? Ridiculous headline. Learn some empathy instead of selling propaganda against Russia over this tragic death,” reads one comment.

“Oh Gersh, do you just stay awake at night trying to figure out ways to be ‘controversial’ or are you really that stupid. Regardless of what he was ‘the face of’, being assassinated by an Islamic terrorist is a bad thing,” reads another. Many readers were fast to remind the author that the US is also participating in Middle East conflicts, and American diplomats have been killed in the line of duty as well. “I'm sure there are many in the dung pile who would have said the same about Chris Stephens.. way to "go high", sickos,” Lynn Peterson reflected. Others went further. “You have got to be kidding me…the United States has committed human atrocities all over the place…seriously Kuntzman are you oblivious to The American war machine and what it has been doing to innocent lives for decades,” Gord Jacquie Clance charged.

The international response to the death of Andrey Karlov was a combination of outrage and support for Russia, as one of their public servants was horrifically gunned down. Besides Turkey, figures such as US Secretary of State John Kerry, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, French President Francois Hollande, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and countless others have offered Russia condolences.

Others celebrated Karlov’s death. Most prominent among them were Ukrainian nationalist politician Volodymyr Parasiuk, as well as Daesh. They have now been joined by NYDN. Gersh Kuntzmann, who joined NYDN in 2012, is best known for a July 2016 article about AR-15 assault rifles in which he claimed that firing the weapon “gave me a temporary form of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable.” It seems, however, that Kuntzmann may have still not recovered from his trauma, as one reader summed up after reading his article: “ Annnnnnd Kuntzman has PTSD again.”

President Obama moved to solidify his environmental legacy Tuesday by withdrawing hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned land in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean from new offshore oil and gas drilling.

Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect large portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic and a string of canyons in the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia. In addition to a five-year moratorium already in place in the Atlantic, removing the canyons from drilling puts much of the eastern seaboard off limits to oil exploration even if companies develop plans to operate around them.

The announcement by the White House late in the afternoon was coordinated with similar steps being taken by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to shield large areas of that nation’s Arctic waters from drilling. Neither measure affects leases already held by oil and gas companies and drilling activity in state waters.

“These actions, and Canada’s parallel actions, protect a sensitive and unique ecosystem that is unlike any other region on earth,” the White House said in a statement. “They reflect the scientific assessment that, even with the high safety standards that both our countries have put in place, the risks of an oil spill in this region are significant and our ability to clean up from a spill in the region’s harsh conditions is limited.

White House officials described their actions to make the areas off limits to future oil and gas exploration and drilling as indefinite. Officials said the withdrawals under Section 12-A of the 1953 act used by presidents dating to Dwight Eisenhower cannot be undone by an incoming president. It is not clear if a Republican-controlled Congress can rescind Obama’s action.

“There is a precedent of more than half a century of this authority being utilized by presidents of both parties,” a White House aide said. “There is no authority for subsequent presidents to un-withdraw. . . . I can’t speak to what a future Congress will do.”

“The U.S. is not acting alone today. Canada is acting to put an indefinite stop to activity in its waters as well,” the aide said. “With Canada, we send a powerful signal and reinforce our commitment to work together.”

David Rivkin, an attorney for the Baker and Hostetler law firm who served on the White House Counsel staffs of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, disagreed with the assertion that the decision cannot be overturned. “Basically I say the power to withdraw entails the power to un-withdraw,” Rivkin said, “especially if you determine the justification for the original withdrawal is no longer valid.”

A legal fight would likely follow, Rivkin said. But “it’s not clear why Congress would want to give a president tremendous authority operating only one way.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) responded sharply on Twitter: “Yet another Obama abuse of power. Hopefully, on[e] that will be reversed…exactly one month from today” after Trump’s inauguration. Cruz closed his tweet with a hashtag: “Taking away Obama’s pen and phone.”

U.S. and Canadian officials have negotiated for months to reach a joint understanding on how to manage adjacent areas in the ocean in an effort to make the new protections as sweeping and politically durable as possible. Meanwhile, advocacy groups lobbied Obama to ban oil and gas leasing in the Arctic entirely.

Obama already invoked the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to safeguard Alaska’s Bristol Bay in 2014, and again last year to protect part of Alaska’s Arctic coast. The president has protected 125 million acres in the region in the last two years, according to a fact sheet issued by the White House.

The Beaufort and Chukchi seas are habitat for several species listed as endangered and species that are candidates for the endangered species, including the bowhead whale, fin whale, Pacific walrus and polar bear. Concern for the animals has heightened as the Arctic warms faster than anywhere else in the world and sea ice the bears use to hunt continues to melt.

The underwater canyons protected by the president cover nearly 4 million acres across the Atlantic continental shelf break, “running from Heezen Canyon offshore New England to Norfolk Canyon offshore the Chesapeake Bay,” according to a separate fact sheet.

They are widely recognized as major biodiversity hotspots that are critical to fisheries. The canyons provide deep water corals used by a wide array of fish. The area also provides habitat “for . . . deepwater corals, deep diving beaked whales, commercially valuable fishes, and significant numbers of habitat-forming soft and hard corals, sponges, and crabs,” the White House said.

The American Petroleum Institute denounced the decision. “The administration’s decision to remove key Arctic and Atlantic offshore areas from future leasing consideration ignores congressional intent, our national security, and vital, good-paying job opportunities for our shipyards, unions, and businesses of all types across the country,” said Erik Milito, the group’s Upstream director.

“Our national security depends on our ability to produce oil and natural gas here in the United States,” Milito said. “This proposal would take us in the wrong direction just as we have become world leader in production and refining of oil and natural gas and in reduction of carbon emissions.”

Contradicting the White House’s statement, Milito said George W. Bush removed previous 12-A withdrawal areas with a memorandum and made all but marine sanctuaries available for leasing. “We are hopeful the incoming administration will reverse this decision as the nation continues to need a robust strategy for developing offshore and onshore energy,” he said.

But a wide range of conservation groups hailed the decision. League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski called it “an incredible holiday gift,” saying that “an oil spill in these pristine waters would be devastating to the wildlife and people who live in the region.”

Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called it “a historic victory in our fight to save our Arctic and Atlantic waters, marine life, coastal communities and all they support.” Carter Roberts, president and chief executive of the World Wildlife Fund, applauded what he called “a bold decision” that “signals some places are just too important not to protect.”

Oil production in the Arctic represents a tenth of one percent of the nation’s oil production overall, the White House said. The area is so sensitive and so remote that the economics of exploration is costly.

Shell, which said in September 2015 that it would shelve drilling plans after spending $7 billion and not finding significant amounts of oil, still has one remaining lease in the Chukchi Sea where it drilled a well earlier last year. Shell is also part of a joint venture with Italian oil giant ENI and Spanish firm Repsol in the Beaufort Sea that holds 13 leases.

Shell held other leases in the Beaufort Sea, which the company transferred to the Arctic Slope Regional Corp., a company belonging to the Native Americans in the region.

An earlier plan to allow limited drilling off the Atlantic coast was shelved after state governments along the southern Atlantic coasts — including Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia — expressed worries over the effect on their beaches, tourist industry and environmentally sensitive marsh.

The Navy also objected. The Pentagon provided Interior with a map “that identifies locations … areas where the [Defense’s] offshore readiness activities are not compatible, partially compatible or minimally impacted by oil and gas activities,” department spokesman Matthew Allen said. The map included nearly the entire proposed drilling area.

Live training exercises are conducted off the Atlantic coast, “from unit level training to major joint service and fleet exercises,” Allen said in a statement. “These live training events are fundamental to the ability of our airmen, sailors, and marines to attain and sustain the highest levels of military readiness.”

The Obama administration eventually closed the Atlantic to drilling for five years.

President-elect Donald Trump could counter Obama’s plan with his own five-year plan, but even so it would be years before drilling could start.

The president-elect’s authority to undo a permanent prohibition is unclear. But Congress, controlled by Republicans, could move to rescind the withdrawal of federal lands from oil and gas exploration.

Afghanistan has launched an investigation into allegations that the country's vice president sexually assaulted a rival, in the face of mounting criticism from Western allies and activists over a pervasive culture of impunity.

Abdul Rashid Dostum, a former warlord who has a catalogue of war crimes attached to his name, is accused of abducting Ahmad Ishchi last month during a traditional game of Buzkashi, or polo with an animal carcass, in northern Jowzjan province.

Dostum allegedly kept Ishchi hostage in his private compound for five days, where he was said to be tortured and sodomised.

"The attorney general's office has begun its impartial and transparent investigation regarding the incident," Afghanistan's top prosecutor said in a statement late Saturday.

"The investigation will be carried out neutrally and independently."

Officials are scrambling to gather evidence after the United States, European Union, Australia and Canada on Tuesday joined the chorus of calls for a thorough probe.

Ishchi has undergone a medical examination since his release earlier this month at the American air base in Bagram, north of Kabul, local media reported.

Dostum has denied the allegations, but his office said he would cooperate with any investigation. It added, however, that it prefers to "resolve" the matter by the traditional mediation of tribal elders rather than through conventional courts.

Observers are sceptical the government will sack or bring charges against Dostum, who has survived all previous allegations of abuse.

"He is too powerful to be sacked or tried in court," said Kabul-based analyst Ahmad Saeedi told AFP.

"The president is under pressure to take action, but he (Dostum) has a lot of support and influence, which the government cannot take lightly."

Despite his human rights record, Dostum was invited to join the National Unity Government in 2014 in a bid by President Ashraf Ghani to attract the support of his mostly ethnic Uzbek constituency.

The latest controversy has once again drawn attention to how Afghan warlords and strongmen operate with impunity, hobbling Western-backed efforts to restore peace and rebuild the nation after decades of conflict.

India’s top counter-terrorism agency on Monday charged Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and its top leader, with perpetrating a deadly attack on an Indian air force base in January.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) stated that all four gunmen who stormed the air base on Jan 2 were Pakistani nationals and that Maulana Masood Azhar, the top leader of JeM, was the mastermind behind the attack.

“All the terrorists are accused of waging war against India. This was a criminal conspiracy to attack our security infrastructure,” said a senior official at the NIA in New Delhi.The presentation of a charge-sheet to a trial court wraps up India’s investigation into the 18-hour siege at the Pathankot air base in which seven Indian security personnel and the four assailants were killed.

The attack, which came a week after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid an impromptu visit to his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, derailed a tentative thaw between the nuclear-armed rivals.

A joint investigation into the attack went nowhere and tension between the neighbors has risen over the course of a year marked by protests and cross-border clashes in the disputed region of Kashmir.

Investigators in New Delhi said the charge-sheet and evidence would be offered to Pakistani authorities to take action against the perpetrators of the attack. “We want Pakistan to arrest Maulana Masood Azhar and he should be deported to India,” said a senior Indian home ministry official who is overseeing the investigation.

The charge-sheet cited DNA samples, food packets from Pakistan found in woodlands near the air base, a walkie-talkie set and a note found in a car used by the militants to drive to the base.

India has long accused Pakistan of using Jaish-e-Mohammad as a proxy to mount attacks on Indian soil and had earlier given what it called “actionable intelligence” to Pakistan, including telephone intercepts.

Pakistan briefly held Azhar, an Islamist hardliner who was blamed for a 2001 attack on India’s parliament, after the air base attack. Its investigators later found no evidence against either Azhar or Jaish-e-Mohammed.http://timesofahmad.blogspot.com/2016/12/india-indicts-pakistan-based-jem-chief.html

The Pakistan Secular Forum (PSF) chairman, Dilshad Bhutto, has strongly condemned the attacks on mosques and homes of the Ahmadi community in Pakistan.

In a statement sent to Ahmadiyya Times, Bhutto said that the government has failed to protect Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and religious extremist and fundamentalist groups are targeting Ahmadis every day. "They are killing Ahmadis, attacking and burning down their mosques and homes."

"Such terrorism is a heinous crime against humanity and a serious conspiracy against Pakistan," he added.

Although constitution of Pakistan provides equal rights to all citizens,but, Bhutto says, the religious fundamentalist elements are misusing the blasphemy laws against minorities and imposing their own Sharia and belief.

Bhutto demanded from the government and lawmakers that they should review and consider changing discriminatory and hateful laws against Ahmadis.http://timesofahmad.blogspot.com/2016/12/pakistan-secular-forum-chairman.html

The Coordination Committee of the MQM London asked why Ch Nisar opposed action against cleric Abdul Aziz despite registration of cases against him. It said that National Action Plan made it clear that no banned outfit would be allowed to work under any other name but the banned terrorist outfits continue their activities without any fear of action by the government.

MQM London coordination committee said that federal interior minister held meetings with the ringleaders of the banned outfits. It said that banned outfits held public meetings and rallies across Pakistan.
The Coordination Committee said that Justice Faez Isa inquiry commission report on Quetta carnage also noted that Chaudhry Nisar had a soft corner for banned outfits and he facilitated them. It urged the Prime Minister to take notice of Chaudhry Nisar’s inaction against the banned outfits.

Any resolve that the PPP-led Sindh government might have had over its recently passed law against forced conversions of religious minorities appears to be crumbling after the ante was upped by the Islamist inertial forces.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Nisar Khuhro has hinted that the PPP might revisit the law, which basically entails undoing the one clause that has forced Islamist parties into throwing their weaponry out of the pram; underage conversions.

The JI and JUI-F, the two biggest Islamist parties in Pakistan that are a part of opposing coalitions at constant loggerheads, were united by the preposterous idea that children under the age of 18 should not be allowed to change their religion.
The JUI-S’ Sami-ul-Haq, the ‘godfather of the Taliban’, has chipped in with the call for the Sindh government’s dismissal over the ‘blasphemous’ decision which, he fears, would lay the foundation of ‘kafiristan’.

The bill against forced conversions had been tabled last year by PML-F’s Nand Kumar, citing a growing number of such cases in Sindh. According to the Aurat Foundation, around 1,000 girls, primarily Hindus and Christians, are forcibly converted to Islam each year. Many of these are under the age of 18 and are married off to Muslims, or forced into bonded labour.

The Islamist pressure on law enforcement agencies – even in cases where religious organisations or parties might not be directly involved – has resulted in victims and their families being intimidated into silence. This is why until September this year, 67 years since the country’s birth, Hindu marriages did not have any legal recognition in Pakistan.

In its annual report for 2016, the United States Commission on Religious Freedom has urged the American government to list Pakistan as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ (CPC). In accordance with the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998, a CPC is a “nation guilty of particularly severe violations of religious freedom”.

While the US government has been condemning religious persecution in Pakistan, most notably the blasphemy law, Washington might initiate the arm-twisting over Islamist extremism and jihadist militancy under the Trump regime.

Earlier this month, the US State Department condemned the raid against the Ahmadiyya community headquarters in Rabwah. “These actions flow out of Pakistan’s constitution and penal code, both of which impede religious freedom as they prevent Ahmadis from exercising their faith and even calling themselves Muslim,” said the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.

A week later the Ahmadiyya ‘place of worship’ was torched in Chakwal.

Once the forced conversion of Ahmadis – from Muslims to non-Muslims – was embedded in the Constitution in 1974, the Islamist captivity of religious freedom became inevitable. The Constitutional ‘takfir’ in itself was a corollary of the Objectives Resolution subordinating civil law to the Quran and Sunnah in 1949.

It is the sovereignty granted to the Islamic scriptures by the preamble of the Pakistani Constitution that legitimises Islamist parties’ call for implementation of Sharia in the country. Supremacy of religious law inevitably leads to the hegemony of supremacist interpretations of that religion, which in turn exacerbates bigotry against marginalised segments.

This is why the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), a constitutionally sanctioned advisory body, has on record upheld ‘nine years’ as the eligible marriage age, supported marital rape and abuse against women, and now recently passed a resolution against Sindh government banning forced conversions.

Needless to mention, Islamic scriptures were used to support all these verdicts.

In the civilised world, a group exhibiting such a wide array of violent bigotry would’ve been proscribed for inciting hate crimes. In Pakistan they issue verdicts over state legislations. But then again, where actually proscribed individuals are being elected to the Parliament, it perhaps doesn’t make much difference.

Last year, the CII mulled whether the Ahmadis were merely non-Muslims or apostates. The latter would mean that the entire community was ‘wajib-ul-qatl’ (liable to be murdered).

Right next to the Parliament, and the Supreme Court of Pakistan, a group of government appointed officials discussed the genocide of an entire religious community.

This underscores the perilous superfluity of an advisory body designated to interpret laws through religious scriptures, and indeed the Constitution’s self-deprecating provisions passing the legislative writ to abstract theology. For, it paradoxically necessitates a tautologous query; would the state legalise ethnic cleansing of Ahmadis, child marriages or forced conversions should a sufficient number of Islamic clerics reach a consensus over it?

It is this ‘unanimous consensus’ of the clergy that Pakistan generally uses to justify the excommunication of Ahmadis. The declaration of a sect outside the fold of Islam eventually paved way for Section 295-B and 295-C of the Penal Code, forming the blasphemy law that not only forbids Ahmadis from ‘posing as Muslims’ but has also resulted in Pakistan becoming one of the 13 states – all Muslim majority – where apostasy (leaving Islam) is punishable by death.

Parliamentarians, advisory officials, illustrious clerics and indeed, banned terrorist organisations are currently fighting for their legal right to forcibly convert non-Muslim children in a country where the punishment for leaving Islam is death.

Pakistan’s forced conversion to a quasi-theocracy is sanctioned by the Constitution upholding a state religion and recognising a deity, and his laws, as the supreme civil authority. The state should either strip off the democratic façade or establish unadulterated egalitarianism, which is not possible without universal acceptance of freedom of belief and conscience, and purging the Constitution of Islamist supremacy.

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari asked Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to keep what he said his fantisiies to himself and focus on four demands presented by him to the government.

The young PPP chairman was responding to allegations levelled by the minister earlier in the day. Meanwhile, Bilawal House spokesman said: “Two laws in one country are accepted in a Brahman rule only and Ch Nisar and the people behind him were trying to impose two separate laws for themselves and the PPP leadership,” .

He said that Ch Nisar is unsuccessfully trying to pose as if he is the only human on earth with angel background but even his own friends describe him as “Chori Nisar” for a reason.

The spokesman stressed that before wearing the fake feather of honesty, Ch Nisar should explain the difference of his and his grand-father’s assets. “Before commenting on PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Ch Nisar should bring back his family and the billions amassed abroad,” Bilawal House spokesman added.

Aseefa Bhutto took to twitter and wrote that Nisar Action Plan has called only one meeting of the executive committee of the NACTA over three and a half years and violated decisions of the executive committee of the NACTA.